Something To Hold Onto
by CatandKaraForever
Summary: Kara makes her decision


**Something To Hold Onto (By Sexghosts)  
** **Rating: M**

Cat sat in her living room staring out the window at the glittering skyline. She could use a few fingers of scotch at the moment, but she was sober as a judge. She needed a clear head for the impending conversation. She hated herself for how she handled this entire situation with the story, and still wasn't sure she was doing the right thing. It was a frustratingly grey situation for a woman accustomed to feeling decisive. She pulled a soft cashmere throw around her shoulders and half-hoped for a minute that Kara would come flying up to the window in her cape and boots.

But alas, the doorbell rang. How pedestrian. How Kara.

She let her inside, and they sat down on the couch. Cat had asked her to come by after Carter went to bed, because they couldn't have a real talk at the office. She hoped that Kara understood that it was a real conversation, and not a dumping. If Cat wanted to do that, she'd do it in a restaurant so Kara couldn't make a scene, the way assholes do it.

She'd tried to send small signs to her throughout the day, small ways of giving her the connection they both still wanted. She even swallowed her pride and called Lois Lane, flat-out asking her to have Clark reach out to Kara. She wouldn't be reduced to sharing her struggles with that bitch,but she would do what she could to marshal the support Kara needed.

Kara was staring at her, still looking wounded. After a moment, she spoke. "You know, when I tried to leave you before, you told me that my big mistake was trying to make a decision about us without involving you in it. And now you're doing the same thing."

Cat paused. "I know. And I didn't mean to do that. If you don't want to go to Paris, you don't have to. But we need to talk about why you should."

Kara was listening, but Cat wasn't sure she was ready to hear.

"Kara, everything about us has demanded compromise. Tell me that hasn't been frustrating to you."

Kara's brow furrowed. "Of course it has. This story situation showed me that."

"Well, it was a compromise for me, too."

"You shouldn't have had to make it."

"But then I'd be asking something unfair of you. Again."

Kara bit her lip for a moment. "You're talking about the whole issue of… of discretion."

Cat nodded. "I want this… us… to work. But… god knows, you have some growing to do, and you need to do it outside of my shadow, because any other way and I'm simply molding you into my own personal fantasy. Do you see how fucked up that is?"

Kara looked long and hard at her, not speaking. Finally, she said, quietly, but with a deep hurt in her voice, "Well, I think you have some growing to do too."

Cat nodded silently. She'd had a shouting match with Shazia Dhoury over shelving the story, with Shazia threatening to walk. When it came to most of her reporters, Cat wouldn't think twice about letting their pretty little blow-dried heads go. But Shazia was one of a few at CatTV with real gravitas, and the notion of losing her was more than a little distressing.

Shazia had stood in the rain in Kosovo as scores of refugees streamed over the border. In the eighties and nineties, she rarely appeared on television without something exploding behind her. In a world of infotainment, she was a real, substantive reporter who knew the business of politics, investigative journalism, and holding people's' feet to the fire. The famous clip of her lambasting President Clinton about Rwanda was considered required viewing in first year journalism classes everywhere in America.

The CEO in Cat cared about the bottom line and was already calculating the costs and how to shore them up, but the journalist in her would be far more sorry to see her go.

But none of that was Kara's problem, and besides, Kara wasn't wrong.

"I know I do," Cat admitted quietly after a moment. "And just like your growth, I think it's something that needs to happen separately from each other."

Kara's eyes were welling up. Her lip was trembling a little. _Goddamnit, please don't do that,_ Cat begged silently. "We have to take this apart so we can put it back together some way that it's going to work better, is that right?" Kara asked.

Cat nodded. "That's exactly right." Cat took her hands. "Because right now, it doesn't. You know it doesn't. You don't even know who you are right now."

"And you?" Kara asked, punctuating it with a little sniffle.

"Oh," Cat sighed, "I know who I am, I'm just not sure I like it."

Kara laughed a little, as a couple of tears spilled out of her eyes. "Cat, I love you too much… This is going to be too hard…"

Cat drew Kara close and let her cry on her shoulder for a moment. Her own eyes felt hot, but she had to be the strong one right now. The grownup in the room. There'd be room later for some tears afterwards, at a pity party in the bath involving too much hard liquor. "Darling," she soothed, "I know you can handle it. We need to do it. It's _because_ I love you and I want this to work that I'm asking you to do this."

 _Can I handle it?_ Cat wondered. But she didn't say it.

"I'm going to miss you too, Kara," she whispered, stroking her back and smelling her hair, fragrant of breezes and the ocean.

Kara started shaking in a way that made Cat think at first that she was sobbing. But she picked up her head and was laughing through her tears.

"What?" Cat demanded.

Kara laughed sweet, pained laughter, her eyes closed and her cheeks dimpled, until she caught up with her breath again. "Poor Sandra," was all she said, and kept laughing, collapsing back against Cat's shoulder.

Cat had to laugh too. There was Kara, always thinking about everyone else. She was being asked to go live across an ocean for the sake of their relationship and her heart was breaking and still, still she had room in her heart to think of all the ways it meant she wouldn't be available to shield Cat's poor, put-upon assistant. "My superhero," she murmured into the side of her neck.

After her laughter subsided a little, she remained quiet for a few minutes, her head still on Cat's shoulder. "Cat?" she asked, and her voice betrayed that there had been plenty of crying mixed into that laughter. "Why Paris?"

"It needs to be far enough that it's at least a little inconvenient for you to turn up on my terrace whenever you feel like," Cat said simply. "And they really do need a traffic manager in Paris. And you speak French. So... "

Kara was silent for a little while longer, but seemed satisfied. "Well, what if I wanted to go to Mogadishu?"

Cat snorted. "Well, I certainly couldn't stop you. But I don't have a bureau there." She stroked her hair. "Darling, I'm not going to force you do anything." She left a whole raft of things unspoken here. _But we need to be on the same page. I need you to trust me. We need to do this. And it can't be ugly._

"If I say I won't go, will you fire me?"

Cat sighed. "What would be the option instead?"

Kara shrugged. "I could quit. Go work for the DEO full time. Pick another city. Not work for CatCo anymore. I don't know."

Cat pushed Kara up so that she could look her in the face. Her eyes were rimmed with red. It tore at the edges of Cat's heart to see her like this. "Kara, it's your decision to make. I'm just offering what seems like the best solution."

It was dim in the living room and Kara's eyes were doing that thing, the thing where they seemed to be such a dark blue, and looked like they were catching the stars in them. The moment she noticed those eyes all those months ago was the moment she'd started to fall in love with this girl. The moment she saw the hints of all the depth in her, the strength, the beauty, and the intelligence.

Kara leaned forward and kissed her softly. "Cat," she whispered. "I'm going to go."

Cat closed her eyes, half relieved, half grieving because it was now it was real. "Are you sure, Kara?" she asked, her voice only hinting at the desperate need she felt for Kara to be sure.

"I'm sure. I've thought about it all day. I've looked at all my options." Her gaze was steady now, and her expression was reminiscent of the unwavering look she had when she was wearing the suit. "I didn't know what I was going to do, right until the moment I walked in here, tonight. But … it feels…" She took Cat's face between her hands and leaned in, closing her eyes, and touching their foreheads together. "...I can't say it feels right, because the idea of being apart from you feels awful, but … if we have to be apart, this feels like the least awful way to do it."

And then Cat felt Kara's lips close over hers, and she surrendered herself to it, to a kiss that she knew she had to savor and hold onto. Her hands wound themselves in Kara's hair, memorizing its silk between her fingers. They kissed until it felt like the world stopping, until everything was reduced down to the two of them, in this room, with the city and the ocean beyond them. They kissed until the world became Kara, and her lips, and the uneven rhythm of her breathing, and the errant warm tear that would slip down one of their cheeks and settle between them.

She felt herself fall backwards into the couch, in slow motion, Kara settling on top of her but somehow not really feeling her weight. In the slow, endless kisses, Kara's arms wrapping around her waist, the movement of her body coaxing Cat's legs to wrap around her.

She felt them rise gently off of the couch, still wrapped in each other, Kara holding onto her, and then floating noiselessly down the hall to the bedroom. Their dreamlike passage was punctuated with these same slow, savoring kisses; suspended in the air, Kara's powerful arms carried her with impossible tenderness. They drifted into the bedroom, and settled softly onto the thick comforter. Cat opened her eyes and looked up, hyper-aware that this was going to be the last time she would see Kara like this, at least for a while. She tried to ignore the very real possibility that Kara growing could mean Kara growing away from her. Right now, she had the present moment, and she would stay here for as long as she could.

Their clothes seemed to fall off of them without struggle. Cat would mark in her mind the tilt of Kara's head as she paused for a moment before leaning down to place a soft kiss on her throat. She would mark the heat of Kara's breath on her skin, the drag of her fingers that went from gentle to rough and back again, the crack in her voice as she said very quietly, "Cat, I love you…" Cat's fingertips memorized the play of the muscles in Kara's shoulders and back, how the skin felt so soft when she dug her nails in. A frustration rose in her gut, feeling Kara's skin but not her weight, and she realized Kara was still floating a little, as if afraid to crush her.

"Don't hold your weight back," Cat begged. "I want to feel all of you. Don't worry about hurting me."

As Kara descended; all the tendons and ligaments and the spaces in between Cat's bones took note of the weight of Kara's body settling on top of her. Cat felt ecstatically, joyously crushed underneath her. "You've always been holding back," she realized.

Kara confirmed this with a wordless kiss.

Something broke inside Cat, and she dragged her nails down Kara's back and gripped her waist, suddenly wantonly rough. She wrapped her legs tightly around Kara's body, grinding herself on it, drowning in the bliss of being pressed underneath it, and felt Kara responding in kind. They were meeting in a frenzy of passion and longing, wanting the moment to be endless, but knowing with awful finality that it would end. Their breath grew thick against each other's necks, and Cat felt more hot tears splash down onto her shoulder. "Kara," she sighed, "Kara, it's going to be alright, I promise…."

She didn't know if it would, but she had to believe it, and if she said it out loud, she could believe it.

Their hips were moving in a quick, desperate rhythm, their mouths colliding and tangling and breaking apart and anxiously tasting each other. Their sighs grew, spiraled upwards in pitch. Cat grabbed Kara's hips tightly and the resulting moan pierced her heart. Their whispering came faster now, urged on by the heat between their bodies and the ache between their hearts:

 _"Cat, oh God, Cat…"_

 _"Kara, I love you so much…"_

 _"...I don't want to leave you…"_

 _"...It's going to be alright, darling…"_

 _"...Cat, this is all I want…"_

 _"...You're so precious to me…"_

 _"...Cat, I need you…"_

 _"...I need you too darling, oh God … I fucking love you…"_

They were grinding against each other's thighs, wet and hungry and painting each other's bodies with their need. They came in each other's arms, holding on tight, because they knew their time was ebbing away. They mirrored each other's shaking, recognized each other's aching. The kisses they shared afterward were slow and deep, and Cat felt a kind of sweet pain that she didn't know her jaded heart could still muster. It was Kara's pain; it never failed, her innocence and softness managed to awaken things that surprised Cat, often things she had given up for lost.

"It's not over," she promised Kara, and meant it.

"No," Kara answered, and curled her long frame up next to Cat's, resting her head on Cat's chest. "It's not over."


End file.
